End of July Fun!

Our end of July was action packed with: a day at a water park, mini golfing, a summer festival, a car show and visits with grandma and cousins from Ohio.

Water Park Fun:

 We went to Raging Waves (minus Joe) with college friends.

 Henry, Me, Jen, Skyler (7) and Derek

Henry measured at 47", one inch to short to go on all the water slides. Soon a whole "new" world will open up for Henry when he reaches 48". The lazy river was by far our favorite especially at the end of the day when the crowd really dies down. I did go on a couple of the "adult" slides at the end of the day with Jen, they were fun. A return visit is definitely in our future.

Mini Golfing

 Joe and I took a couple days off a work at the end of July to enjoy some summer fun with Henry.

We went to Congo River Adventure Golf in Hoffman Estates. It has 2 courses and we played both courses in the steamy morning heat. Great suggestion by Joe to reverse our plans for the day. If we didn't change our plans we would have missed out on the mini golf due to the pouring rain that hit just before noon. We literally just made it inside the Woodfield Mall before the down pouring of rain hit. It was still pouring rain much later when we left the mall. Silly us, did not bring in jackets or umbrellas. Henry loved running to the car in the rain.

We all ate very well at the Rain Forest Cafe.

Henry had a free meal certificate he earned from a reading program at school.

We let Henry pick out something for $15 at the Lego store. Henry took his time looking at all the $14.99 items or 2 smaller items. Surprisingly, there were quite a few options for him to choose from. After much thought, Henry picked a Lego car, we should have guessed that would be his final choice.

TREE MAN!

This would be a funny Halloween costume.

Enjoying a yummy treat with Grandma!

Corn Boil

 Mmm...hot..salty..buttery and delicious!

 Vroom, vroom!

Parker and Henry

This year Henry had a great time at the Sugar Grove Corn Boil with his friend Parker.

Cousins from Ohio visit:

Alex, Zack and Henry

Turning Back Time Car Show 

 We found a car Henry doesn't have to wait to drive, hahaha!

I'm not sure how adults can really fit comfortably in this car.

 

Oops, bad day to forget your shades, Henry!

 

 One of my favorite cars of the day.

This car was remote controlled by Dad. Awesome!

There were also a lot of motorcycles at this show.

This motorcycle is one of our good family friends/Papa's best friends bike. He won an award too, woohoo!

A Henry/Daddy favorite bike!

Papa was excited to finally find youth shirts at a car show.

Papa won an award for top 100 car/truck at this show.

Impressive considering there were close to 1,000 cars/trucks at the show.

4th of July 2016

 Henry went to Papa-Nana's cabin early for our 4th of July visit this summer.

He enjoyed getting some extra time in to go fishing. Nice, catfish Henry.

Henry caught another fish too. He likes to point out that he caught 2 fish and Papa only caught 1 fish.

We were able to squeeze in a visit to the water park in Dubuque this year.

Cousins: Andy, George, Henry, Mary and Zack

 The highlight of the Bellevue, IA 4th of July parade this year was Papa's 1936 Ford Truck being in the parade along with...

...specially selected passengers.

Henry and Andy had the same shirts on (unplanned) that day. Henry loves his 2013 hand-me-down Old Navy flag t-shirt. As soon as it gets washed he picks it out right away to be worn again.

 

Before the parade, quite a crew!

Henry, Mary, Jennie and Andy

Wow, check it out we made it in the weekly Bellevue newspaper. 

 Aw, 3 boys who love kitties!

Not many places you can walk down the street of a town and have the road literally divided by train tracks.

Later, we had cheeseburger cake for dessert. Mmm...it was good!

The cousins enjoyed performing mini camp fire skits for us. They were fun to watch.

We can see more of Henry in the tube this year.

Ribbit, Ribbit, Ribbit!

On the Saturday of Father's Day weekend, we went to the Morton Arboretum to see how good of sleuths we were at finding 23 frog sculptures.

Here we go!

Shorty, Charlie, Miles & Henry

Emerson, a caffeinated croaker having a cup of jo with Joe and Henry.

Fred & Ethel

Jacques Emile Blanchet

Zenny

This was the last frog we almost didn't find.

We were in the gift shop and saw her on a postcard. 

While we were checking out after finding this super, cool rain gauge we told the lady that we didn't find one frog, Zenny. She told us the secret, we had to go through the library to the meditation garden to find her. We didn't even know there was a library; it's a nice library too.

 We found a few real frogs!

My boys going for a stroll.

I wish we would have looked at this living billboard at all the different angles.

Henry really enjoyed the puppets in the gift shop.

The true sign of a good time. This was after the Arboretum and lunch.